Thursday, January 2, 2014

Darkness, Literary Submissions, and SFWA

I am sooo excited about 2014.

This is because, like I said I would, I've revamped my approach to many things. But what has me so pumped? The suddenly discovered new dream of joining the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Considering I have yet to publish any short stories in a professional market, I have a little ways to go towards this dream, but I'm confident. Admittedly, it may take me a little while and a series of other unqualified market publications before I have enough to qualify for membership (It's quite a grueling process if you aren't traditionally published already, which, ha! Is a grueling process in itself!). Still, I know I will succeed in this endeavor.

This membership is more of a tertiary goal than a primary or even secondary one. My primary goal is to gain more exposure for my work. I plan on doing that by publishing short stories related to or at least in the genres of my novels. I came around to this plan (and the series of subsequent goals) in a weird way.

I had a dark moment.

A really, profoundly, and utterly disturbing moment.

Talking about this to Christian, my husband, as we walked around our neighborhood one night got me thinking about I how I could deal with this darkness.

And then it hit me - I should write a story! I've dealt with other things through writing, why not this? I wrote the thing in one sitting - maybe an hour tops. And I was amazed. I was amazed because I wrote something completely unexpected in a genre I never write: horror.

How weird is that? This genre that I almost never read, hardly ever watch, and certainly never write, ended up being the motivation to get back into the saddle and send out some submissions.

I don't know why these things happen the way they do, and I don't know why my search for magazines to submit to yielded such completely different markets than I'd previously found. All I know is, this is definitely a new year.

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